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“…yet BP is assuring them they don’t need respirators or other special protection from the crude oil, strong hydrocarbon vapors, or chemical dispersants being sprayed in massive quantities on the oil slick,” Ott writes.

The fishermen wear air-quality monitoring patches on their rain gear, but have not been told the results, she writes.

“Hydrogen sulfide has been detected at concentrations more than 100 times greater than the level known to cause physical reactions in people,” according to the Institute for Southern Studies.

But what about South Floridians? Will we face the same health concerns, when, long after the oil rig exploded, the oil reaches us?

Two weeks ago I would have said no, based on a report posted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explaining that benzene and other volatile organic compounds evaporate into the air and rapidly degrade, in a matter of weeks.

Soylent Green was what people ate after the plankton died.

But what happens to benzene sequestered beneath the sea by dispersant? If it cannot reach the surface and evaporate, will it dissolve into the water and be taken up by the food chain?

Will it kill all sea life a la Soylent Green, or cause legions of child leukemias years into the future?

The short answer is, it’s unclear, because the sheer volume of oil pouring into the sea, and because the use of chemical dispersants is making this an oil spill like no other.

What’s in the dispersants? The EPA says it knows, but it cannot tell us, because it’s a trade secret.

So we asked Wilma Subra, a chemist whose firm, Subra Company, is working as a consultant to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, which has been suing BP to protect workers’ health.

The former is safe enough that it’s used in some pharmaceuticals. The latter is a solvent that smells like Windex. It’s in Simple Green, the cleaning product. And it’s in Corexit 9527, one of the oil dispersants.

“This is going to kill a large amount of the aquatic population,” Subra predicted. “It’s going to bioaccumulate up the food chain.”

If it’s true that the oil gets into the loop current and eventually washes up on the beach, Subra says, she advices people to stay away, based on what’s happening in southern Louisiana.

The EPA says that air quality along the shore, so far, has been OK. Subra disagreed.

The dispersant may help keep the slick from oozing onto the shore, but the wave action is sending it into the air, she said.

“The slick is actually being turned into an aerosol by the high winds and waves. It came on shore well before the slick,” she said. “People were complaining of headaches, nausea, respiratory problems, burning eyes. These are symptoms you’d expect to see with volatile organic compounds.”